Nigeria’s 7,000 Megawatts Electricity Can’t Drive Prosperous Economy- DG Textile Employers

By Gambo Abubakar Kaduna

 The Director General of Nigerian Textile Garment and Tailoring Employers, Dr. Hamma Kwajafa has identified poor infrastructure as the bane of Nigeria’s economic development, saying that, the country’s drive for foreign investments cannot succeed without critical infrastructure like power in place.

   Kwajafa who stated this while delivering his address at the 35th Annual Nation’s National Education Conference of National Union of Textile Garment and Tailoring Workers of Nigeria (NUTGTWN) recently in Kaduna.

According to him, South Africa economy is doing better than Nigeria because of electricity with the population of just 60 million people, can boast of 50,000 megawatts of electricity.

 While Nigeria with population of over 200 million people, is battling with 7,000 megawatts of electricity. He said, “that cannot drive a prosperous economy.”

“We say Nigeria is the giant of Africa, but infrastructure is our biggest challenge, dealers of textile materials now going to China to buy polyester fabrics."

" In Nigeria our refineries are not refining in Nigeria for us to get the raw material. The refineries are exporting jobs."

 He however noted that, the reason Dollar is growing higher everyday against the Naira is because we are not exporting. Instead, we are the highest importer of Champagne,and are busy consuming what we don’t produce.

 In his address, at the conference, with Theme; the "Future of Work in the Nigeria Textile and Garment Industry’ the national President of the Textile Workers’ Union, Comrade John Adaji called on the Federal Government to take drastic steps to save the textile sector in Nigeria.

  He also called for increase in import duties for finished textile products, granting of tax waivers to local industries, provision of adequate infrastructure especially energy and availability of forex to import raw materials among other measures.  

 "The cotton, textile and garment sub-sector of the economy which used to be the second largest employer of labour after the public sector is on steady decline due to company closures and massive loss of jobs."

“It's time to address decisively the perennial challenges facing the textile industry particularly smuggling and electricity supply."

  The national president also urged the government at all levels to direct their procurement policies towards patronage of Made in Nigeria Textile fabrics in line with the Executive Order of the previous administration.